Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord went to the high priest

—Acts 9:1

and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.

—1 Timothy 1:14-15

Anyone else out there glad that God came up with the idea of forgiveness? I can’t even imagine what kind of world we would live in if forgiveness wasn’t something available to us. Relationships would be brittle and short-lived. People would be consumed with anger and pain. There would be no hope, no joy, no way back to God.

Praise the Lord that is not our reality, but here’s the rub. God has given us a wonderful gift in forgiveness through His grace and mercy, but we have an enemy who doesn’t want us to accept it. 

Our enemy isn’t able to prevent everyone from believing in the truth of the Gospel, so he has become very good at making us feel like we’re beyond the reach of forgiveness instead. If he can’t keep us from finding Jesus, he’s going to do his best to make us believe we have no chance of being forgiven and accepted by Him.

If there ever was a man in the Bible who might have been tempted to feel this way, it would have been Paul, formerly known as Saul. As Saul, he had tried the work-your-way-into-heaven method. He studied under all the right teachers. He followed all the right rules. He prayed the right prayers. He performed the right rituals. He even made it his personal mission to destroy those who taught anything he thought was opposed to Torah. And the result, when we meet him in Acts, is that he has become a man who is “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.”

This sounds a bit like he might be whispering those threats or saying them under his breath, but that’s not what we’re being told here. If we go back to Genesis, we remember that we were given life through God’s breath. It’s what gave the first man a soul, and we know from our practical experience that our breath is our life force. 

So when the writer of Acts tells us that Saul was “breathing threats and murder,” what he’s telling us is that Saul was completely consumed with persecuting Christians. Threatening and murdering Christians is what filled him, what defined him, what gave him life. It’s no wonder that Paul calls himself the “foremost” of sinners in 1 Timothy. 

Given the circumstances, I don’t think it’s much of a surprise to most of us that Jesus appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus a little later in chapter 9 asking him why he is persecuting Him. Saul has become consumed by the desire to kill Christians, so it makes sense that Jesus would want that to stop. 

What is a little bit more surprising is how Jesus handles the situation once He appears. Instead of casting judgment and opening a pit in the ground to swallow him up or causing him to immediately fall down dead, all Jesus does is ask Saul why he is sinning, introduce Himself, and tell him to go into the city for further instructions.

He doesn’t condemn; He questions. He doesn’t reject; He introduces Himself. 

This is absolutely amazing to me. Jesus wasn’t satisfied to leave Saul in that place spiritually and let him experience the consequences of his actions and choices. Instead, he decided to pursue and forgive. And I love how clear Jesus makes it that this is what He is doing because He doesn’t just appear to Saul. He also appeared to the person he had chosen to minister to Saul when he got to town.

There is so much hope in that! For some of us, falling into the pit of thinking we could never be forgiven is so easy it almost feels natural, but if there was ever someone too far gone into sin, it would have been Saul. And Jesus didn’t tell him his sins were too bad to be forgiven. Instead, the Resurrected Savior actively pursued him to initiate and solidify a relationship with him.

No matter what mistakes we’ve made, Jesus has not given up on us. He is eager to introduce Himself, and He actively desires to remove the barrier of our sin through grace and forgiveness so that we can have a relationship with Him. 

If you’re the person who knows someone who feels this way, what if you are that person’s Ananias? Ananias was assigned the job of ministering to Saul, which helped him get to the point where he could write 1 Timothy 1:14-15. If he had decided it was too dangerous to go talk to Saul, the man who became the apostle Paul never would have regained his sight.

If you’re the person who feels like you’ve messed up too badly for Jesus to want you, why don’t you ask Him? Tell Him you want to be forgiven but feel unworthy of that gift. Ask Him for His help in accepting that gift. Or, if you feel uncomfortable with that, seek out a trusted Christian or pastor who could help you. Those mistakes may seem big, but His love for you is so much bigger.